Abstract

Among the standard stages of the engineering design process, the principle solution can be regarded as an analogue of the design specification, fixing the way the final product works. It is usually constructed as an abstract sketch where the functional parts of the product are identified, and geometric and topological constraints are formulated. Here, we outline a semantic approach where the principle solution is annotated with ontological assertions, thus making the intended requirements explicit and available for further machine processing; this includes the automated detection of design errors in the final CAD model, making additional use of a background ontology of engineering knowledge.